Jillian C. York

Jillian C. York

Director for International Freedom of Expression

Jillian C. York is EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression and is based in Berlin, Germany. Her work examines state and corporate censorship and its impact on culture and human rights. At EFF, she currently works on several projects, including Surveillance Self-Defense and Onlinecensorship.org. Jillian's writing has been featured in Motherboard, the Guardian, Quartz, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, among others. She is also a regular speaker at global events.

Prior to joining EFF, Jillian worked at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, where she researched Internet censorship. In a previous life, she lived in Morocco and worked as an English teacher and travel writer.

Jillian holds a BA in Sociology from Binghamton University, where—like a surprisingly large number of individuals in her field—she also studied theatre. She alternately resides in the Internet or on an airplane and can often be found blogging or tweeting, as @jilliancyork.

Deeplinks Posts by Jillian C.

EFF is shocked and dismayed by the 15-year jail term handed down today in absentia to Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah and 24 other co-defendants, on charges of unlawful protest and attacking a police officer. The judgment was not expected to be made until 10am, but...

Today, Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil is celebrating his 33rd birthday in prison. This day is the 799th since the young software developer was detained in Damascus, Syria. That’s nearly 800 days that Bassel has not been able to write code, or tweet, or hug his family, or do any of...

After a two-week ban on the website imposed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's Constitutional Court has ruled that the block breached freedom of expression. Access to Twitter was subsequently restored within the country.
The ban on Twitter drew widespread criticism both within and outside of Turkey. President...

[Accessing] any part of a computer system without right. Cyber-squatting. Cybersex. Computer-related forgery. What do these things have in common? They are all punishable acts under Philippines’ Cybercrime Prevention Act. EFF has closely followed the Philippines Republic Act No. 10175, also known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act, since it...

Following his pledge to “wipe out” Twitter last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered ISPs to block the site, which they did by tweaking DNS settings and redirecting traffic from the page to a government blockpage. The move was futile; Turkish Internet users have been dealing...

UPDATE: As of March 22, the Turkish government has blocked Google DNS and other DNS servers, which were being used by thousands to circumvent the ban on Twitter. We recommend that Turkish users download the Tor Browser Bundle, which will continue to allow them to bypass censorship (here...

Are you a student who's passionate about Internet and technology policy? Come work with EFF this summer as a Google Policy Fellow!
The Google Policy Fellowship program offers students interested in Internet and technology policy the opportunity to spend the summer working on these issues at public interest organizations—including...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released its annual “Enemies of the Internet” index this week—a ranking first launched in 2006 intended to track countries that repress online speech, intimidate and arrest bloggers, and conduct surveillance of their citizens. Some countries have been mainstays on the annual index, while others...

With Coursera lifting restrictions for users of its online educational courses in Syria, but upholding restrictions for users in the sanctioned countries of Cuba, Iran, and Sudan, the need for streamlined communication technology policies for countries sanctioned by the U.S. is more necessary than ever.
Cuba, Syria, Sudan, North...